Leon was once again unceremoniously knocked down my Merlin just as the beast came crashing through the trees. It was a huge thing—bigger than any deer he'd ever seen! Apparently it had forgotten all about Merlin, and busied itself with stamping out the fire while Merlin huddled behind a fallen log.

"Look at the size of it!" Leon said, sitting up to get a better look.

"Get down!" Merlin said urgently, tugging at his chain mail. But Leon wasn't paying attention-years of growing up horseback chasing down deer in the forest made him willing to turn a blind eye to the creature's size, its huge fangs, its red eyes. It had to be twenty-five pointer! It must have fantastic meat. Arthur was right about hunting—it may not mend a broken heart, but it's good fun!

"Hand me that crossbow!" he told Merlin, unaware of the giddy excitement in his voice. He could feel his usual caution slipping away.

"What?" Merlin looked at him as if he was mad, and said, "Are you mad?"

"Arthur will never believe it!—it's absolutely gorgeous!" Of course what Leon saw in his well-bred mind was a bit more picturesque than what the beast really looked like. But that didn't matter. Just at that moment the animal snorted and charged off into the trees. Without missing a beat Leon leapt to his feet, grabbed a crossbow, and pounded after it.

"Hurry, Merlin! Come on! We can't let it get away! Gwaine! Head it off, quick!"

…

Gwaine and Merlin stared after Leon.

"Head it...off?" he repeated.

Did they really just see that? I mean, this wasn't Percival or Elyan or one of the other knights. This wasn't even Gwaine himself, which would have been infinitely more believable. This was Sir Leon. The only one of them for whom the "Sir" part was natural, was practically a part of his name.

He didn't just...go off like that!

Gwaine was...outraged? For a single guilty moment he realized what it was to be the one standing behind trying to sort things out while someone else charged heedlessly off into danger for no apparently good reason. He had a struggle with his conscience, but fortunately won out, and snapped out of it with a, "So he is a man, after all!"

"This isn't funny, Gwaine!"

"You're right. What the hell does he think he's doing?" he cried. "That's a Sailetheach, not the bloody white hart!"

"I, ah...think he's hunting it," Merlin said sheepishly. He seemed accustomed to explaining the stupid antics of the nobs and nobility. He needed to get out more. Then, "Wait, you know what that thing is?"

"Yeah, saw one once, hunting party in Tara, but only the Irish are crazy enough to take one of those beasts down. I've seen one bite a hound clean in half! And it took twelve of us then to kill it!"

Merlin was looking pale, though, so he stopped.

Leon's desperate cries of "Gwaine! He's getting away, Gwaine!" grew fainter in the night, so he laughed, stood, and clapped Merlin on the shoulder. "Look, come on. I'd much rather bring Arthur enough venison for a year than explain to him how Goldilocks went and got himself killed."

He ran on ahead, only noticing after a moment that Merlin wasn't following. "Come on, Merlin, I want you to stick close to me!" he called. "Take my crossbow, it's weakest in the eye and knee-joints."

…

It took Merlin's eyes a moment to adjust to the darkness after the deer monster reduced the fire into charcoal ash. He took advantage of the moment and hunkered down behind a fallen tree, only to find that he was the only one doing so. Leon, in a very un-Leon-like show of nobleman idiocy was watching the monster with… admiration? Did he actually want to hunt that thing?

He didn't even pay attention when Merlin tried to get him to stop drawing attention to himself. What was it with the knights and hunting things? First Arthur thought he'd take on the deer single-handed and half asleep, and now Leon wanted to hunt it?

"It's not gorgeous! It's a slavering monster deer!" he hissed as he nonetheless handed Leon the crossbow. Who was he to question a direct order from one of Arthur's knights? Ok, so he did it all the time. But that was beside the point. Knowing that Arthur had, in fact, left both Gwaine and Leon in charge, Merlin looked to Gwaine to prevent Leon from going off after something that would probably kill him, then chew him up and leave various limbs strewn about for ten miles around.

Gwaine thought it was funny. They were all insane, and here was the proof Merlin had been looking for all these months. He looked at the crossbow Gwaine shoved at him like it was also going to bite him and took off after Gwaine and Leon, muttering the whole time.

"Of course. No one is crazy enough to hunt one of those! No one except the Irish and—" he paused for a moment as he nearly ran into Gwaine, who'd stopped crashing around to listen for the sounds of Leon presumably either killing the deer or being killed himself. Gwaine took off running again and Merlin trotted after him, "No one except the Irish and Arthur's knights." he grumbled as they finally caught up with Leon and the—what had Gwaine called it? A Sailetheach?

Leon had cornered the beast against a rock wall, and it had predictably turned and had its horns down, sharp teeth bared and bright red eyes glaring hatred at the knight armed with only a crossbow.

"Didn't you just say no one but the Irish are crazy enough to hunt that?" Merlin asked Gwaine as they all stood there at a momentary impasse. Gwaine looked at him and shrugged.

"Maybe he's part Irish," he answered and clapped him on the shoulder again before propelling Merlin toward Leon and the beast where he could keep an eye on him.

The beast chose that moment to charge, causing Merlin to jump to the left and the knights to the right. Rather than taking the opportunity to escape, the monster shrieked, turned, and charged again with frightening speed at Gwaine and Leon, who were not quite prepared for the attack.

Merlin fired a crossbow bolt… and found that when he'd jumped, it'd fallen out of the bow. Splendid.

With no other recourse that didn't involve trampled knights, and since he was currently obscured by both darkness and a giant deer, he muttered under his breath at a tree just as the Sailetheach passed by, causing a limb to fall and entangle its horns. With a bugle of rage, it flung its head in the air and left an opening between flailing forelimbs and sharp pointy teeth for Gwaine to shout, "HA!" and dive in to slice it across the knee. It went down, disentangled itself from the tree, and was about to scrabble back onto its feet—sort of—when there was a thwock! followed by the sound of a crossbow bolt thunking into something solid. For a moment the deer was still, and then it crumpled. Gwaine stood, sword still out, and looked at Leon, who looked from the deer to the other knight.

"That was a good shot," Gwaine admitted to Leon as they both stepped forward to see the crossbow bolt buried neatly in the dead deer monster's eye.

"You can come out now, Merlin," Leon laughed, apparently assuming Merlin had been hiding behind another tree.

"Good job that it got caught in a tree so you could trip it," he said to Gwaine as Merlin joined them, looking very annoyed but saying nothing. Both knights looked at the tree, whose branch was now hanging slightly crooked due to being pulled half off by the deer as it went down.

"Yeah, good job!" Gwaine agreed, but he was looking at Merlin and grinning as he said it. Merlin avoided doing anything really stupid like whistling innocently (mostly because he wasn't very good at whistling), but he did glance at his feet as if something had caught his attention, and then coughed and looked at the deer.

"How are you going to get that back to Camelot? It'll take two horses… at least. Probably three," he said, jabbing it with a foot.

"Why, we'll let you carry it! It should only take you… six trips? I suggest starting with an arm," Gwaine said helpfully, and Merlin glared at him, but was saved from answering by more crashing. He didn't even bother raising the boltless crossbow, instead stepping out of the knights' line of sight—just in case—as two guards on horseback came galloping up.

"Arthur sent us to make sure you hadn't got yourself killed," they explained to Merlin, looking warily at the monster deer's corpse. Leon stepped forward, once again looking the responsible, level-headed knight.

"Well, then, you may take this back to Arthur with our compliments—" he started, but in a moment Gwaine broke in over Sir Leon's formality.

"But since you'll need Merlin's horse to carry the thing all the way back to Camelot when Arthur sends you back, he can stay with us."

"Take that back? But…" one guard started, looking exceedingly doubtful, but Gwaine clapped his hands and grinned broadly.

"Glad that's settled!" he said, and started tromping off back through the forest. Leon, in typical nobleman fashion, ignored the beast now that the chase was over and followed Gwaine, leaving Merlin and the two guards.

"Come on, Merlin, keep up!" Gwaine hollered back a moment later, and Merlin muttered an apology before following after the two knights.